The sixth annual conference, held at the MARC Pavilion at Modesto A. Maidique Campus, welcomed experts and decision-makers from Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States to discuss a host of public health challenges, with a focus on preventing emergent diseases from becoming global pandemics.
The conference featured more than 20 speakers to discuss a wide range of topics, including current public health challenges in the Americas, the globalization of infectious diseases and confronting emerging viral threats. The speakers included experts from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Southern Command and the Global Virus Network.
The speakers are world-renowned thought leaders in their respective disciplines and they bring a comprehensive view of the challenges that global health faces today.Tomás R. Guilarte, dean of FIU Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work
Dr. Roger Glass, MD, PhD, MPH
Presentation: Global Health – Urgency, Importance and Priorities
Dr. Glass was named director of the Fogarty International Center and Associate Director for International Research by NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., on March 31, 2006. Dr. Glass graduated from Harvard College in 1967, received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Buenos Aires in 1967, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1972. He joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1977 as a medical officer assigned to the Environmental Hazards Branch. He was a Scientist at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh from 1979-1983 and returned to Sweden where he received his doctorate from the University of Goteborg. In 1984, he joined the National Institutes of Health Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, where he worked on the molecular biology of rotavirus. In 1986, Dr. Glass returned to the CDC to become Chief of the Viral Gastroenteritis Unit at the National Center for Infectious Diseases. Dr. Glass’s research interest are in the prevention of gastroenteritis from rotaviruses and noroviruses through the application of novel scientific research. He has maintained field studies in India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Israel, Russia, Vietnam, China and elsewhere. His research has been targeted toward epidemiologic studies to anticipate the introduction of rotavirus vaccines. He is fluent and often lectures in five languages.
Dr. Marcos Espinal, MD, MPH, PhD
Presentation: The 21st Century Threat to Public Health — Rapidly Evolving Antimicrobial Resistant Organisms
Dr. Marcos Espinal is chief of the Department of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis at the WHO’s Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Washington, D.C. He was previously executive secretary of the WHO’s Stop TB program and earlier held positions in the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Health. Espinal trained as a pediatrician in the program and earlier held positions in the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Health. Dr. Espinal trained as a pediatrician in the Dominican Republic and, starting in 1989, pursued his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of California, Berkeley with support from Fogarty’s flagship AIDS research and training program. He has published more than 100 papers about communicable diseases. Dr. Espinal’s work experience includes positions in the Ministry of Health of the Dominican Republic and the National Center for Research on Maternal and Child Health; the New York City Public Health Department; and the WHO. Before joining PAHO, Dr. Espinal served as Executive Secretary of the WHO Stop TB Partnership, a global movement aiming at the elimination of TB as a public health problem. Dr. Espinal has published more than 100 publications in the field of communicable diseases and is a recipient of the Scientific Prize of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, the Albert and Mildred Krueger Memorial Fellowship, and a graduate scholarship from the John E. Fogarty International Center. In 2008, the University of California at Berkeley awarded Dr. Espinal the Walter and Elise A. Hass International Award for a distinguished record of service in international health; and in 2012, he was awarded the Princess Chichibu Memorial TB Global Award by the Japan Anti-Tuberculosis Association.
Sponsors
We would like to thank our sponsors for the 2017 conference:
- SANOFI
- MERCK
- OXITEC